Last beach day of season...

Two taxis, a boat, an hour's steep hike. Lovely breezy 25C sunny weather. It is indeed quite a trek (four hours to be exact) to the most lovely beach in Hong Kong: Tai Long Wan (big wave bay) located in Sai Kung.  We took a taxi to Sai Kung ($200HKD) then a New Territories Green Taxi to Wong Shek Pier ($90HKD). Then paid an old po-po/grandma $20hkd each to drive 6 of us on a small boat for 15 mins to Chek Keng, the hike start.  From there we walked a very steep 2km towards Ham Tin beach including a stop for instant noodles, fried eggs, vermicelli and fresh organic peppers. Oily but tasty. Their toilet was a dungeon literally though. From Ham Tin, this time around it was PACKED of tourists. Then another 15-20 mins hike up rocks with climbing ropes, then down to Tai Long Wan, where we played in the big waves, slept on the clean beach and just relaxed before the trek backwards home... long day!  Usually there are old ladies driving their boats directly to Sai Kung to Ham Tin but the waves were just too big.


Upon returning to Sai Kung (mad traffic) Stephen and I ate at Paisano's which was rammed with foreigners.  Their crust is nice but toppings sparse except oddly for too much cheese (typically costly in Asia), and far too little tomato sauce.  I'm sore!  Our new mattress was a welcome retreat once home.


Now today - another week at work. But i'm glad to be in town and not traveling for once. Have a great week everybody!

Din Tai Fung in Taipei 101 = so so

There are tons of Din Tai Fung xiao long bao (steamed bun with soup) restaurants around Asia, Australia and in Toronto also.  But I went to one location in its native city of Taipei, and supposedly the newest location tonight with a few colleagues - in the B1 basement of Taipei 101. To be honest - it was average. I think thus far the best tasting location is in Hong Kong Causeway Bay. On the topic of soup dumplings that originate in Shanghai, they were the worst there actually (stomach aches yuck).  At least on the 'plus' side the tung choi (water spinach) is back in season!  In general Taipei restaurants are cleaner with better service than in Hong Kong or China (but maybe only in the Xinyi modern area).

This week is the last week of business travel for some time (I hope!).  Can't wait to breathe easy this weekend and next week :)

it was my grandma's birthday this week and soon my grandpa's birthday too. I wish I was home to celebrate with them :(

Have a nice Wednesday everyone!

Homemade wonton and gyozas... took the plunge with the mattress!!

We did it. Spent a fortune on king sized brand name mattress. Stephen is convinced the top 3 mattress vendors mix up all the brand names and model numbers so you can't read reviews; but there are globally only a handful of different models. Oh well. We're knowing suckers. Now onto the expensive sheet sets, mattress covers, bedframe and re-organizing our home to accommodate this new king(dom).


Anyway also found wonderful non frozen locally made wonton and gyoza wrappers at Wellcome Superstore (24 hours, Causeway Bay near Ikea). They taste better than they look the photos - steamed was way better this time; last time the wrappers were thinner so fried gyozas rocked. Unfortunately the won ton wrappers were gigantic so some were envelope-like!  All in all, I really enjoy making wontons and gyozas from scratch!


To add to our shopping misery, we caved and bought an air cleaner which is totally needed given the bad air and non stop air con in HK.

Now... off to Taipei and Beijing this week again.  But our guests shall be more comfortable enjoying our current double bed!  Have a great week everyone!

Mattresses in Hong Kong are so expensive!

Ikea cannot be the ONLY place in town for beds. So we were convinced that normal branded mattresses were available in Hong Kong. Yes they are (Simmons, Sealy, and King Koil, plus some more Asian local brands like Slumberland).  But man - these mattresses cost a fortune!  Plus there is usually the Japanese and U.S. models. The Japanese styles are shorter (like 190cm length) and bed is too firm for me.  And they're into space saving, non-pillow top thickness.  Like 8" height.  Does it really save that much more space? Are ceilings lower in Japan too?  The U.S. models can be much longer but the prices are easily 3x the North American prices.  Now the big jump from our Full/Double sized bed to Queen seems not worth it; we should have upgraded before shipping our furniture over to Asia.  That said, no chance in hell a King sized bed will fit into our elevator or flat (actually we didn't measure).  But the more elbowing in bed, the more we'll have to pinch pennies and jump take the plunge.  A ten year investment in a good mattress seems worth it, no?  We got so disillusioned that the hydraulic storage leather bed/headboard seemed very interesting...

Happy 3 year anniversary and 25th birthday to Stephen

Forgot to mention in my last mad 'diary'- like blog that we celebrated our 3 year wedding anniversary and Stephen's 25th birthday in late Sept. Good times although suburbia isn't really my thing :)

Good bye Steve Jobs, Hello Yangshuo, Cebu, Hillary and joint Toronto visit

Dear Friends - I have been terrible at keeping up with my blog. First and foremost, Steve Jobs, the legendary innovator behind Apple's amazing story, Pixar and disruption of the music industry, passed away from pancreatic cancer a day after the IPhone 4S was announced. He told Stanford Grads in 2005 to Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish, and with our careers, Don't Settle.  The world shed so many tears and so did I. What a loss and in time to stick it to Bill Gates for copying Apple's OS decades ago.

Two months have passed since we headed off to Cebu Philippines for a one-night two day trip to Mactan Resort in Lapu Lapu for my birthday.  Awful beaches and mediocre food, but a great nearby getaway with spa, pool, jetskiing and snorkeling!  Great weather too; not too hot. Wifi and lazy lounge chairs as well. Only 2 hours by flight away, we managed to have a great b-day dinner with friends then scoot off on Sat morning until Sunday night!

https://picasaweb.google.com/118026906425264328225/CebuPhilippinesAug2011

Somewhere in between the stock markets crashed again. Sad for our new investments in HSBC.

Anyway the rest of August my two close friends Claire and Domina moved to Hong Kong. And we got did fabulous hikes to Sai Kung beach which was surprisingly far better than in Cebu! And the stream of visitors continued with my MBA classmate Alice and her sister, Stephen's cousins from France, my cousin Lily from Toronto, his uncle from Toronto, etc. Fun times!

In September, we took a weekend trip to Yangshuo, a gorgeous karst mountain range in Guangxi province near Guilin (this is the home province of my father's family). Local tour guide (Mulan) was hired and we rode bikes about 50km (flat) through rural areas. The weather was humid but we enjoyed wonderful locally chilis and food, rice picking hats, outstanding views cormorant fishing and random local shops for snacks.

https://picasaweb.google.com/118026906425264328225/YangshuoGuilinAreaGuangxiChinaSept2011

For the rest of the month, I was in North America, first in LA for work then San Francisco as an APEC delegate with Hong Kong for the Women & the Economy Summit. At this amazing conference, we got to hear Hillary Clinton and Sheryl Sanberg (Facebook) and Christine Lagarde and Yang Lan speak how Women's full participation is good for economic recovery.  Met a lot of great people from public and private sector from all around the world!  Then it was all work after that before meeting Stephen in Toronto.

It was our first trip back to Toronto together since moving to Hong Kong. A lot of babies and family events which is nice but totally different from Hong Kong life. Seems too short. I am so glad to finally be back at home in HK after an immediate trip to Taipei to speak at a work conference. Then getting really sick after throwing up from a fancy Hakka lunch meal. Thankfully I recovered quickly!

Miss everyone and sorry that my blogs are becoming more factual and less insightful.

Typed from my new mac book air!!! thanks Stephen!